


collections

by agaave



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Sonnie's Edge, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:54:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23703430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agaave/pseuds/agaave
Summary: The shorter things that don't really deserve their own upload.
Relationships: Capella/Fauldren (original characters), Rafael/Misha (original characters), Yia-Yia/Cecil (original characters)
Kudos: 1





	1. capella's home

The first time they'd met Niki, Capella had been ten. Niki, at twelve, had seemed centuries more mature. 

Capella had found him at the base of a tree, kicking around a ball by himself.

"Can I play with you?"

Niki had stopped, looking them over, one foot planted in jealous protection on top of the ball. He'd pointed at the tree, at a bird's nest tucked high into the thin branches.

"I'm hungry. Steal an egg for me, and we can play."

"Okay," Capella had said, thrilled to be invited to participate. 

-

Capella had been eleven when they'd first broken their arm. They'd been sledding with Niki, zipping down an incline they weren't supposed to play on. They were both laughing, excited by their own daring. 

"You should try that way," Niki had said, pointing. 

Capella had looked, and frowned. 

"It seems… scary."

"Are you a baby? A baby would be too afraid," Niki taunted, and Capella's small hands had gripped the sled more tightly. 

"I'm not!"

"Prove it."

And Capella bit back the anxiety and said, "Okay."

Niki had come to visit them after, and knocked on Capella's cast.

"You can still play with me tomorrow, right?" 

-

When Capella had been thirteen, there had been a girl. Her name was Inais, and she had smiled a lot, inviting Capella to come over and play a dice-rolling game with her. The dice she had carved herself, inset with tiny rounded beads so she could feel the numbers instead of see them. 

Capella had thought they were cool, loved them enough that she had offered to spend the next few days teaching them how to make their own. 

"You've been spending a lot of time with her," Niki said, when Capella showed him the results of their hard work. "Is she your best friend now?"

Capella had been startled into an answer. There had never been any doubt in their mind.

"No! You've always been my best friend, Niki." 

Niki had looked satisfied. "Good. You're mine, too. Can I have that one?" 

He'd pointed at Capella's favorite, the best-made die with rounded pieces of seashell instead of beads. 

"Okay," Capella said, and pressed it into his palm. "See? We're best friends."

-

Niki had done his growing gracefully. He'd grown up first, getting taller and leaner, his face growing sharper and his eyes flashing under dark brows. He'd kissed boys and girls and held their hands and stolen moments away with them, and then he left them. 

"You're lucky," he'd said once to Capella, standing ankle-deep in the lapping waves of a lake, skipping stones across the water. "People leave you alone. They never leave me alone."

"Why don't you tell them to stop bothering you, then?" Capella had asked, and Niki had shrugged. 

"You won't understand it."

"I guess not," Capella said, sitting on the shore and tucking their knees up under their chin. "But I will someday."

And Niki had laughed. "You're not the same as me. You won't."

"Okay," Capella had said, "I won't."

-

Capella's growing did not come gracefully. First there was the weight. They were hungry all the time, and never satiated for long. Niki poked their stomach and made jokes, and Capella always laughed. 

But Capella's father would only give them so much. Daniil and the rest had to eat, he said sternly, and Capella was old enough to know not to be selfish. 

Selflessness didn't make the hunger go away, and Capella started hunting. They tracked animals and set traps and climbed trees and fished, and along that time their height began to creep up. The weight they put on changed in quality, muscle instead of fat. Their hair grew longer and their coordination improved. They got better at hunting, and the extra food they gifted instead of saving for later.

And people were looking now. The types of glances that Capella was receiving were changing. 

In the week leading up to the spring festival of their seventeenth year, four people asked Capella to spend it with them. Two of them did it with gifts. 

"I think I might go with Anahi," Capella had confided to Niki later. "He's pretty."

"Don't," Niki had said, and kicked a flower. 

"Why?"

"I don't want you to go with anyone else."

"You've been going with someone else every year," Capella had pointed out. Gently.

"So? Things were different then."

"I don't understand."

"You never do."

And Niki had taken Capella's face in both hands, leaning up on his toes to steal their first kiss. 

"I want you to go with _me_ ," he'd said, pulling back. 

"Okay," Capella had breathed, bright-eyed.

-

Niki was lying with his head on Capella's lap, absently curling a lock of their hair around one finger.

"It's getting long," he said. "Are you going to cut it?"

"Maybe."

"I think you should. It's getting in your face. I like your face." 

"Okay," Capella smiled, "I'll cut it."

Niki reached up to push their hair behind their ear, fingertips grazing a scabbed-over scratch on Capella's jaw. He frowned.

"This is new."

"It's nothing," Capella said hastily, and Niki's frown deepened. "I didn't even notice it until yesterday."

Niki sat up, one hand in the thick grass to prop himself up. "You wouldn't lie to me, would you? You trust me. I know you do."

Capella bit the inside of their cheek. "I do. I love you. I'd trust you with anything."

"Then tell me the truth."

"... Okay."


	2. college au p1

"Dude. What are you doing?"

Yia-Yia stands at the entrance of the apartment's small living room, yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looks breathlessly good wearing one of Cecil's jerseys and nothing else, his hair down around his shoulders. 

Cecil sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, then lets it go with a low, frustrated groan. There's a dull headache starting to pulse behind his eyes and in his forehead, but he needs to focus. He still has six hundred words to go.

"I, uh. Might have procrastinated on one of my essays. And it might be due in time for my ten am class tomorrow."

Yia-Yia's head turns so they can read the wall clock, mounted above the television. 3:31 am.

Cecil waits for them to go. To say "okay, goodnight, good luck," and go back to bed. Instead, Yia-Yia pads barefoot to the kitchen, and Cecil can hear the fridge open, the stove click on. The unexpectedness of it distracts him from the pressing matter of the essay, and he leans back on the couch, trying to see into the kitchen and what Yia-Yia's doing. 

His laptop makes an unsatisfied noise at him, prodding him to do a software update for the second time today. The noise reminds him of the work he has to do, and Cecil hurriedly tabs into the pdf he's using as a source, trying to remember what point he'd been trying to make before Yia-Yia had come into the room. He manages another paragraph by the time Yia-Yia comes back, holding two mugs in hand and settling himself down carefully on the couch next to Cecil. They press one mug into his hands, and Cecil catches a whiff of cinnamon and vanilla.

"Okay, how much more do you need?" 

"You don't have to do this," Cecil says instead, and Yia-Yia laughs, reaching over to pull his syllabus into their lap and read over the essay requirements. 

"Of course I don't. But I want to."

There's… not a lot that Cecil can say in response to that, actually. Lacking something to say, he takes a sip from the mug. The drink is warm and comforting, and he can feel the headache dissipate a little. 

Yia-Yia rests their head against Cecil's shoulder as they read his current progress, stopping every once in a while to point out something he can fix or elaborate on. Fauldren's a good tutor, but Yia-Yia has a way of making their corrections seem organic, instead of striking down all of Cecil's work. He can keep his train of thought. 

Between the pair of them, Cecil finishes his essay in a reasonable amount of time, slamming his laptop shut with a satisfied sigh. He always feels relieved after finishing an assignment, but this time it's tinged with something else. 

"Thanks for helping," he says, and Yia-Yia stifles a yawn behind one hand. 

"Glad to assist. Don't procrastinate, next time."

"No promises," he laughs, one arm draping casually around their shoulders. "Especially now that I know I have someone who's willing to stay up and help me write it."

"I will not," Yia-Yia grumbles, but the way they're settling more comfortably against his chest is admittedly contradictory to their tone. "Don't make me rescue you."

"Even though you will?"

Yia-Yia sighs in defeat. "Even though I will."


	3. college au p2

He knew as soon as he’d woken up that he was the first up. The house was completely silent, the only light coming in from the sun that hadn’t quite yet breached the horizon. 

Yia-Yia was still completely out, lying on his stomach with his arms under his pillow. Cecil resisted the urge to reach out and touch his face. He'd wake up soon, although Cecil knew by now that he was useless before his morning coffee. Better get up and get that done now. 

It was a gesture he knew he didn't have to make, but it was worth it just for the way Yia-Yia smiled when he saw Cecil come into the room with it.

_Fuck, I'm in this deep._

He threw the covers off and tugged on a shirt, making his way out of the bedroom and coming to an immediate halt after that. Right. Which way was the kitchen? He'd only been there once so far, and the layout of this place was different than his own family house. Cecil's home might have been slightly larger, but his family had long since upgraded to more modern sensibilities, all white walls and sleek furniture. 

Yia-Yia's family house was _old,_ its history steeped into every inch of hand-carved wood. It was only slightly more lived-in than a museum, the draperies and furniture spotless and well-preserved. Glass cases protected artifacts and art pieces that probably had more zeroes attached to their price tags than your average house alone.

It really was only the obscene wealth of his own upbringing that even remotely kept him from feeling completely overwhelmed by the nature of this place.

He went down a hall, backtracked, and found his object on the second attempt, a spacious kitchen with extremely modern utilities blended into older sensibilities. He was kind of impressed with how smoothly it avoided being jarring.

"Good morning."

He spun around, startled. Yia-Yia's mother was sitting in one of the chairs by the island, a floor-length robe draped around her shoulders, her hair tumbling in loose waves down her back. She hadn't been here when he walked in. Had she? 

"Are you making coffee?" she prompted, after a second's delay.

"Uh - yeah. Good morning. Do you want some?" 

"Please."

She lapsed into silence after that, diverting her attention to the unopened mail on the table. For a while there was nothing but the hum of the coffee maker and the gentle rasp of paper, just barely quiet enough to be acceptable for this time of morning. The kitchen lightened from blue to gold as the sun rose, more light spilling in from the windows. 

The coffeemaker made a pleasant beeping noise as it finished brewing, and Cecil made to reach for a mug.

“Cecil,” her voice broke the silence, and he closed his outstretched fingers deliberately before he turned to face her. “Do you mind chatting a bit with me?”

He’d been stupid to hope that he could be alone in a room with a parent and somehow escape a one-on-one conversation. Okay, he could do small talk. It wasn’t great, but he could manage it for a couple minutes. Just sit, chat, and wait for an opportunity to escape. 

“Of course not,” he said. He grabbed her a mug and filled it before pulling up a chair, half-turned to face her.

She took a moment to regard him, a slow, inscrutable gaze that crawled along his skin the longer it went on. Cecil had heard the phrase “see right through you”, but nothing compared to the actual _feeling_ of it, the urge to step away and explain himself at the same time.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for getting to the heart of this immediately,” she said, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear as she brought the mug to her lips. “I think it’s simpler if I don’t pretend around what I want to ask.”

She placed the mug onto the counter, both hands wrapped around it as she watched the steam curl up into the air. 

"What is it you want from my son?" 

Oh. Oh, _shit._

Could he lie? Would she know? Would half the truth be better?

"Nothing, really," he said, managing a casual laugh. "I like things the way they are. He's a good friend." 

Her gaze hardened, and he felt a plunging sensation in his stomach. Wrong answer.

"Yia-Yia is very good at being unassuming and kind," she said, and her accent sharpened, not quite as flawlessly suppressed now. "Because he is disciplined. He is strong enough to be one of the few genuinely good men in this world. When I look at you..."

Her eyes were dark even in the rising light, almost black when they focused on him. 

"To me, you are nothing like him. It entertains you to break things apart, to take what you want, when you feel like wanting it. Your only credit is that you have recently, finally begun to crawl into some form of discipline, and yet even then, you have to use Yia-Yia to do it. Relying on his kindness to rescue you."

He was cracking, unable to summon up even a flicker of anger in the face of her attacks. It burned, deeper than any rage, a brand he was helpless to fight against. It rooted him to the seat, unable to move to speak. 

"You can't even admit to yourself what you are doing," she said, and stood. "Do you think that someone like you is worthy of him as you are? Do you feel that you are allowed to want him the way you do?" 

Her lips pressed into a thin line, as if she had more to say and suppressed it. She shook her head as she headed to the doorway, and paused, her hand resting on the frame. 

"Thank you," she said, "for the coffee. And the talk."


	4. college au p3

There was a quiet back-and-forth down the hall, barely audible footsteps and soft beeps accompanying the movement. An intruder? 

An intruder in the kitchen?

Cecil fumbled sleepily towards the other side of the bed to confirm that yes, Yia-Yia was gone and probably the one up and about. He cracked one eye open to check the alarm clock blearily, then groaned.

Half of him was tempted to go back to sleep. The other half knew he never would. 

He threw back the covers with a resigned sigh, passing a hand over his face as he sat up. The bedroom was cold, the warm bed practically calling his name. He could still lie back down.

Instead, he stood up, swatting on the hallway light as he made his way towards the cramped kitchen, Yia-Yia startling when they noticed him leaning sleepily against the entryway. 

"Sorry, did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet," he said, wincing at his own mistake. He was holding a mixing bowl, one cheek dusted with a smear of flour.

"Can I ask," Cecil punctuated the question with a yawn, "what you're doing up at two in the morning?" 

"I," Yia-Yia paused. "I was hungry."

His sentence rose up a little at the end, like he was unsure of his own answer. Cecil raised a brow. Yia-Yia's smile widened uncertainly, his spoon clinking against the edge of the bowl. Cecil reached up to wipe the flour off his cheek.

"Fine," Yia-Yia said, after a minute, "I got some bad news, okay? I can't sleep when I'm stressed, and I wanted cinnamon rolls, I don't know. I just… I needed to do _something._ It seemed like a good idea at the time."

There was another little silence.

"You're a stress baker?"

Yia-Yia rolled his eyes, but he was smiling as he turned away, back to his cinnamon rolls. "Not always. Usually, I try to work out or run or whatever, but you know."

And then, "Oops."

He'd gestured aimlessly with the spoon he was using, sending flecks of cinnamon powder and sugar across the floor. Cecil snorted.

"I'll get it."

"No, I can -"

"You're distracted enough," he said, and patted Yia-Yia's shoulder. "I got it. Just… focus on whatever you were doing."

Yia-Yia looked like he was on the verge of protesting, but nodded, turning back to the counter. His posture had relaxed since Cecil had first seen him, his shoulders a little looser, his face a little less worn. 

_Baking must really be helping._

Cecil threw the last of the sugar grains back into the trash, suppressing another yawn. Yia-Yia saw it, the frown reappearing on his face as he started to turn away from his work.

"You don't have to stay up. I can just scrap this."

Cecil shook his head, throwing a casual arm around Yia-Yia's shoulders.

"Nope, I'm committed. Lemme help."

Yia-Yia knew better than to attempt to persuade him. He gestured towards the cabinets instead. "Can you get one of the baking sheets? The big one."

"You were already almost done," Cecil said, watching Yia-Yia cut the rolls and place them onto the sheet, "Why the hell would you scrap it?"

"Well, one, I still have to make the icing," Yia-Yia slid the pan into the oven and clicked on the timer, "And two, you getting enough sleep is a lot more important to me than dessert."

"What about you getting enough sleep?"

Yia-Yia shrugged, moving around the kitchen to grab a fresh bowl for the icing. "It happens. Next time I'll do something quieter."

 _"Next time,_ you'll wake me up so you don't have to be stressing out alone at two in the morning," Cecil said. "C'mere."

Yia-Yia stepped forward in confusion, stopping next to Cecil. "Here?"

"Close enough."

Cecil pulled him all the way in, arms wrapping around him, his chin resting on top of Yia-Yia's head. Yia-Yia made a surprised noise, but didn't pull away, still clutching the bowl in one hand as the other came up to rest at Cecil's waist.

"It's okay to ask for things, you know? You don't have to try to deal with shit on your own."

"Even if it involves me waking you up?"

"Yep."

"What if I wake you up every night for a week?"

"If you're not sleeping for a week, I'm pretty sure that you're having the kind of problems that need a friend, anyway."

"Stop making more sense than me. That's my job," he said, and Cecil laughed, letting him go.

Yia-Yia didn't step away immediately, his forehead resting on Cecil's bare collarbone as he yawned.

"Finally," he murmured. "Took me long enough."

"You wanna go sleep? I'll finish this."

"What? No," Yia-Yia frowned at him. "You go sleep."

"Show me how to make icing and I will."

"Promise?"

"No."

"Dick," Yia-Yia snorted, but put the bowl in his hands anyway. "Fine."

Icing was surprisingly simple, actually, and Cecil finished whisking it together just as the oven timer went off. Yia-Yia pulled the rolls out and tore off a pinch for a taste test, nodding to himself.

"Not a complete failure," he pronounced. "But better with icing."

"Coming right up."

They were, in fact, delicious, although Cecil limited himself to sharing one with Yia-Yia. Between them, it disappeared in a few bites, and he resisted the urge to go back for seconds.

"Thanks for the icing," Yia-Yia said, "And for - staying up with me."

"For you? Anything," Cecil said, and meant it.


	5. promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Misha goes away.

“I think now I'm allowed to say I wasn't sure you'd make it."

 _"Rafi,"_ Misha says, instantly petulant. "That's mean."

Beside them, on the bedstand, the digital clock display reads _12:07 am._ They both know Misha should probably be sleeping, and neither of them bother to suggest it. Across the room sits Misha's packed belongings, unobtrusive. And yet both of them are painfully aware of their presence.

"I'm kidding," Rafi says soothingly, one arm wrapping around Misha's waist. "I just… don't really know what to say."

"Most people stick with _congratulations,"_ Misha sniffs. "Boyfriends are allowed to also say _'I'll miss you'_ and _'I'll text you every day.'"_

"Can you?"

Misha pauses. "I don't know. It depends on how much work I have to do, I guess. I'll probably be really busy settling in at first."

Settling in, Rafi thinks, at an obscure base hundreds of miles away, putting his life on the line every day for the sake of the greater good. For years, decades maybe, with breaks every few months to come home.

"I still might not make it," Misha murmurs, tucking himself more securely into Rafi's chest. "There's the probation period for all the cadets coming in."

"Don't fail, then."

Misha snorts. "Okay. I won't."

"See?" Rafi says, combing Misha's hair away from his forehead with one hand. "Got nothing to worry about. Easy."

"Easy," Misha repeats doubtfully, but some of the jittery anxiety has left him. 

The clock ticks on. 

_12:27 am._

"Do you want me to text you every day?" 

It’s as close as Rafi will ever get to an admission. Misha tips his face up to look at him, one hand coming up to touch his fingertips to his jaw.

“Yes. Please.”

“Okay,” Rafi says, and Misha blinks. Two concessions in as many minutes. On a night like tonight, he doesn't have to guess why he's gotten them.

“Hey,” he says, turning fully to face Rafi, one hand on the bed on either side of him. "We're gonna be okay. Okay?"

Rafi huffs and pulls his face away from Misha's fingertips. "I knew that."

Misha leans up further to kiss him. When he pulls back, it's only enough to see Rafi's face, mostly shadowed except for the thin moonlight that manages to struggle through the open curtains. "I'll miss you, too."

"Don't do anything stupid."

Misha grins, and holds up a pinky finger for Rafi to interlock with his. "Promise."


	6. android au p1

"Don't you have some software to debug?" Fauldren asked irritably, looking up from his table to see Sanbica clicking through his desktop. 

Sanbica, being Sanbica, was unfazed, navigating through a few more screens before responding.

"Maybe. Watcha got here, some kind of… nanny-bot program?"

"It is not a nanny-bot," Fauldren said, _finally_ fishing out the cable he needed and plugging it into his tablet. He could have just done the upload wirelessly, but it felt safer to do it the old-fashioned way. Sanbica snorted, watching him plug the other end of the cable into its socket behind the android's ear. "It is a companion."

Sanbica sucked in a breath through his teeth, giving Fauldren a pitying expression. "Yeah, sorry to tell you, but HIVEtech's already got a sex doll line. Didn't think you wanted to break into that market." 

"Oh, for the love of - keep snarking at me and I'll slash your budget," Fauldren grumbled. 

"Rude," Sanbica huffed, dropping into Fauldren's chair with enough force to make him wince. He'd paid good money for that gel suspension, if you don't mind. 

"So what does the not-sexbot companion program do?" Sanbica asked, idly swiveling back and forth. 

Despite the flicker of irritation, Fauldren was pleased he'd asked. It was nice to have someone like Sanbica beta his ideas. 

"AI programming has already been successfully married to androids," he said, gesturing to the metal husk lying on the table, "What I'm doing is nothing new on that front. But the current models are… stiff. Too much like human-shaped appliances. They don't resonate with people."

"And you're gonna be the guy to create a genuinely intelligent android?" 

Sanbica didn't sound skeptical. He knew Fauldren wouldn't be attempting it if he didn't have some reasonable game plan. It was one of the things Fauldren appreciated about him; his attitude was dropped when he needed to be real.

"So I hope," he said, waking his tablet with a swipe of his fingers and checking through the data, making sure everything had transferred smoothly. 

"You think you can market it?"

Fauldren shrugged. "People humanize their appliances all the time. Do you remember roombas?"

"Do I remember _what?"_

"Mmm. I suppose those were before your time."

"Piss off," Sanbica snapped, "You're only eight years older than me." 

"In terms of technology? Might as well be a century."

Fauldren unplugged the cable, setting the tablet aside. Sanbica hopped to his feet, coming to the table to inspect the android more closely.

"Been a while since I've seen this guy without any synthskin," he noted. 

Fauldren nodded. "This project's more involved, so I've been giving him an almost complete overhaul. He's been needing it for a while, anyway."

"Could've just brought in a new model."

"Yes, but I'm attached to this one," Fauldren said, patting the carbon-fiber skeleton fondly. "Besides, have you tested the new synthskin from Yolotl's lab yet? It's very nice, not even the latest models have it yet." 

Sanbica snorted. "What's his name again? Sonata?"

"Capella," he corrected, "I haven't thought of a new one yet."

Fauldren liked to change his project android's name, basing it off whatever he'd recently used it for. There had been a brief thing earlier when he'd tested some virtual singing software, resulting in the current name. 

"Well, good luck," Sanbica said, heading for the door. "If you need my help, you know where to find me."

"I might call you in later for work with the tactile sensors. You're better with them than I am."

Sanbica preened. "I am. Let me know."

"If I even get that far," Fauldren sighed when Sanbica left, looking back over at the android's face. He still had a _lot_ of work to do.


	7. android au p2

Fauldren unplugged the cord from behind the android's ear, smoothing the open panel of synthskin flat. The android's face was perfectly smooth and relaxed, neutral in a way that broke the illusion that it was sleeping. Fauldren tapped a button on his tablet, starting the wake-up sequence. 

"All right, let's see what you're feeling today," he said, watching the android blink awake. He hadn't been doing well lately, but he'd made a few more modifications to his programming and _maybe,_ just maybe this was the right track. 

He was surprised when a hand came up, shielding Capella's eyes from the bright overhead lights. That was a new response.

"Are you alright?"

"It's… bright," the android mumbled, and Fauldren felt a flicker of excitement. Discomfort? The android had found an unpleasant stimulus and acted to correct it. Good. Very good.

"Do you need me to turn down the lights for you?"

"No, they're adjusted," Capella said, and the hand came down, resting on their thigh. Not the table. It wasn't such a monumental difference, but Fauldren was noting down everything. "Thank you."

"Is there anything else bothering you?" he asked.

Capella wasn't listening, their gaze sweeping slowly around Fauldren's lab, taking in everything bit by bit. Several previous versions of Capella's software had shown interest in their surroundings before, but not before Fauldren had dismissed their attention. Interesting. 

"What is this place?"

"This is my lab," Fauldren said, scribbling down his observations onto his tablet while he spoke. "I do android construction and testing here."

Capella was looking down at their hands, then back up to Fauldren's. He had neglected to give them any defined appearance, opting for the default off-white synthskin. It could, of course, mimic any human or nonhuman skin tone under the sun, but he hadn't seen the point of setting any preferences while still in the testing phase. 

"And I'm one of your constructions?" Capella asked. 

A logical conclusion based on observation. Fauldren suppressed a smile. "You are. Your name is Capella."

"What are you testing me for?"

"Personality," Fauldren said, locking his tablet and putting it aside to look at Capella fully. "You're doing very well so far."

"I haven't done anything."

"You've been doing a lot," Fauldren said, smiling. "I still want to check a few things, but it looks like you're going to be the one coming home with me."

"Coming… home?" Capella repeated, a tiny furrow pinching their brows. 

"I want to see how you do in a house setting. Obviously, this place isn't the best for mental stimulation," Fauldren said, waving a hand vaguely around the lab. "We'll be more comfortable there, too." 

"You should at least take me out to dinner first before taking me home."

Fauldren's mental process, thinking about further testing and whatever else he was going to do completely stopped. 

"That was a joke."

"Should I not have?"

"No, I," he brought the side of his index finger up to his lips thoughtfully, "I want you to make jokes. But you never have before." 

And so naturally, too. It was the kind of dumb thing Sanbica would say. 

"I must not have been very interesting, then."

Another joke. Fauldren smiled. "You are very much interesting, now."


	8. beastie au p1

The click of heels on tile is the loudest thing in the long walkway, the track smoothly rolling the massive life-support pod along the floor without so much as a single creak. 

Cecil grins, leaning against the pod as it halts, the group waiting for the newcomer to close the distance between them.

"Come to check out the new and improved Null Alpha? Can't blame you."

"I'm sure I don't need to guess what you've stitched onto your beastie since the last time I've seen it," Fauldren says, but his gaze flickers back to the pod when Cecil lowers the opacity on the protective faux-glass. 

The beast inside is close to fifteen feet tall, one of the largest in the ring and with the bulk to match. It was heavily armored, the exoskeleton designed for inexorable strength over speed. The arms ended in four-taloned hands, double-jointed for extra articulation in favor of Cecil's preferred fighting style; crushing and tearing his opponent to a bloody pulp. The curved horns atop the head were admittedly for ego more than battle - any decent fighter would attempt to grab them for a handhold - but the twenty-inch bone spikes at the end of the tail were not. 

The thagomizer wasn't trademarked to Cecil, not _yet,_ but it might as well have been. It was the thing he'd kept most consistent across Alpha's various iterations, the thing his fans knew him for. 

"It's gotten uglier," Capella notes, leaning a little to the side to get a better look at the beastie's profile, "What've you been doing, Sanbica, making it look more like its fighter?"

"Yep," Sanbica says, without a beat of hesitation, "Thought people would appreciate the visceral satisfaction of seeing a lookalike get fucked up in the ring."

Cecil cocks a brow at Sanbica. "Do you want your cut?"

"Do you want me to quit and give the Hydras a new hardware specialist?" Sanbica asks sweetly in response. 

Fauldren smiles at Cecil's grimace. "If you take my bet today as estimate, I don't think either of you will be getting a winner's cut today."

"Excuse me?" Cecil says at the same time Sanbica asks, "You bet on the _competition?"_

Fauldren links his arm with Capella's, shrugging elegantly. "I could be wrong. The odds are eight to three in your favor." 

Cecil had originally discounted the competition for today. No ring would have pitted him against a newbie, it wouldn't have been worth the effort, but he'd heard fucking nothing about this booster, just that they'd traveled abroad to start doing fights here. 

But if Fauldren was gambling on them, then he was either stupid or had a real reason to believe in this fighter. And Fauldren wasn't stupid.

"At the very least, you'll have your appearance fee," Fauldren says, motioning for Capella to hand over the envelope. Sanbica does a quick count, flipping through the bills before nodding at Cecil. 

"I'm gonna have more than your fuckin' _appearance fee,"_ Cecil grumbles, smacking the side of the pod twice with the flat of one hand. It starts sliding forward on the track again, towards the lift. 

"See you in the pit," Fauldren says serenely, and earns a middle finger for his trouble.

He strides away with Capella, leaving Cecil to make the trek down to the arena with his group. The roar of the crowd was audible long before they broke out into the light, rising to a deafening pitch once they make their appearance. 

_This._ This is it, what he lives for. The anticipation and hype coming to a crashing fight in the arena, the knowledge that tonight someone is going to be coming out of here a champion. 

At the opposite end of the arena, another team steps into the neon lights, led by their booster. Cecil knows that his name is Yia-Yia, and that's about it. He seems immune to the cheers and screams, meeting Cecil's gaze from across the empty space. 

Cecil feels magnanimous enough to smile, his confidence surging. There's no fucking way he's going to lose tonight. 

They both settle into their seats, closing their eyes. Cecil walks his beastie out into the area, and sees Yia-Yia's for the first time. 

It's a long, low thing, technically bipedal to comply with the rules. Razor-sharp bone ridges run along its back and forearms, a deterrent against Cecil's grabs. Its jaw is set with triplicate rows of teeth, curved inward.

 _Inkanyamba,_ it was called. The bringer of storms. 

The arena lights shift and change color, and the fight begins.


End file.
